Global General
Multimillion-dollar UN corruption case uncovered
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-03-19 10:08
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Yakovlev has pleaded guilty to US charges of accepting $900,000 in bribes from UN contractors, but he did not acknowledge involvement in the Eurest or Armor bids. Task force investigators had documented in a series of UN reports more than $3.5 million in bribe payments he deposited in at least 12 bank accounts around the world.
In January 2007, the task force asked Armor for documents, setting off an internal company investigation the next month and a separate probe by its board of directors.
A lawyer for the board then "disclosed the circumstances" behind its probe to Justice Department and US Securities and Exchange Commission officials, British-based BAE Systems said in a May 2007 press release shortly after purchasing Armor.
That month, the UN investigations were made public in the company's SEC filing. The Justice Department began following up.
Ed O'Callaghan, a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York who has overseen high-profile and international corruption cases, said the task force "certainly showed its value in that and other investigations" pursued and prosecuted by US authorities.
"An organ as large as the United Nations, with the budget that it has, needs to have a vigorous watchdog," he added.
The task force's three-year investigation concluded that Armor officials, IHC and Yakovlev steered a 2001 contract for bulletproof vests to Armor subsidiary Supercraft (Europe) Ltd., opening the door to more UN contracts through 2006.
A lawyer for Bistrong and officials from Armor, Compass and IHC, which no longer exists, did not respond to AP requests for comment.
The task force was created in 2006 to prevent another scandal like the $1.8 billion bilked from the UN-administered oil-for-food program for Iraqi humanitarian relief. It completed more than 300 investigations in three years, but was closed down at the end of 2008 due to political opposition from some countries.
Since the start of 2009, the number of complex fraud and corruption probes completed by the UN's permanent investigation division has sharply declined, The AP reported in January.
The task force's draft report on Armor and Bistrong was left to the UN's permanent investigation division to issue in 2009. It was never issued. A year later, Nesirky said the report is "forthcoming."
